The St. Peter Saints girls basketball team came to town last Friday and beat the SJA Saints 67 to 36.

While SJA is a young team starting three sophomores, St. Peter represents the opposite kind of team. It is a upperclassmen led team that started three seniors.

One of those was Tailor Raymond, who notched her 1,000 career point last winter when she played at St. James.

Last week Raymond poured in 27 points and grabbed 15 rebounds for a double-double.

St. Peter also started a 6’2” sophomore center. SJA had no one to match up to her or the other tall players on the St. Peter frontline.

Still, the ‘good guy’ Saints got off to a good start against the visitors. SJA moved out to a 5-2 lead in the opening minutes of the game. It was a short lived lead, as St. Peter tied it at five with a little over 15 minutes to play and never trailed when they took a 7-5 lead with 13 and a half minutes in the first half.

The height differential was a big advantage for St. Peter and the visitors began to take advantage of it early in the first half.

There were several offensive series where St. Peter got two, three or four offensive rebounds before they would score or SJA would come down with the rebound. You can’t coach tall and St. Peter had an abundance of it. St. Peter had 47 rebounds for the game.

SJA was hampered a little bit in the first half when starter Brenda Cervantes picked up her third foul midway through the half and sat the rest of the half.

A combination of good defense by St. Peter and poor shooting by SJA kept the Saints from mounting much of a scoring attack.

SJA only shot 18.8 percent from the floor. Emily Hurley led the team with eight points and did shoot 57 percent from the floor. Aryn Eckstrom also had eight points. Julia Beckius, Allison Brandts and Emily Bottem had six, five and four points respectively.

Hurley also led the team with eight rebounds. Eckstrom was next with five.

St. Peter continued to build on their lead over the entire length of the game. St. Peter did get into foul trouble in the first half, which put SJA in the two shot bonus midway through the half. Unfortunately, SJA only shot 50% from the line for the game.

Coach Adam Schroeder continues to rotate his players in and use these games to have his younger players gain valuable game experience.

Page 2 of 2 - There were times when SJA had three freshmen on the floor against St. Peter.

Some day the SJA girls will be a team loaded with upperclassmen and they will be more like St. Peter, but last Friday belonged to St. Peter because of their age and experience they have on the basketball court.

St. Peter is one of the better teams SJA will see this year. SJA plays them again at St. Peter in early January. One way or another its good for the young Saints girls basketball team to get this game behind them.